Part of V.I. Warshawski, book 10
First published 2001
V.I. Warshawski attends a Holocaust assets conference in downtown Chicago where protesters demand justice. A slight man named Paul Radbuka stands to tell his story of childhood trauma during the Holocaust. His account devastates V.I.'s friend and mentor Lotty Herschel, who fled Austria as a nine-year-old refugee before the war. Radbuka claims recovered memory therapy revealed his true identity, but V.I. suspects he may be an impostor exploiting someone else's history. As Lotty begins to unravel emotionally, V.I. launches an investigation into Radbuka's past while juggling a separate case for a poor family cheated by their insurance company. Both cases pull her into international crime networks spanning Switzerland, Germany, and Chicago's South Side. V.I. must decide which memories of wartime horrors she can trust as she moves toward a truth that threatens to destroy her oldest friendship.
Genres: historical-fiction, mystery, crime, thriller
Vibes: emotional, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: investigation, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Chicago, Switzerland, Germany
Period: 20th-century, World War II
414 pages · Paperback · Delacorte Press
Content warnings: war